Fire & Ice
by Music's Crescendo
Summary: The elements they're likened to are often so misfitting. Two-part series
1. Chapter 1

Lightning doesn't know why people compare Fang to fire.

Sure the Pulsian is loud, brash, and infuriatingly annoying, but she's anything but full of fire. Some call her flirtatious, as she wears her sexuality as easily as she wears that sari. But Lightning isn't blind, and she isn't stupid. The soldier can see through the façade as easily as Fang dispatches Pulsian beasts.

Lightning can read Fang in a way unknown to the others in their ragtag band of l'Cie, she can see past Fang's loud and annoying exterior, and into who the huntress really is. Fang is capable of lying with her mouth and her body, but she can't lie with her eyes. The soldier finds it bitterly ironic that the huntress' little sister cannot see the conflict and internal pain Fang is suffering through, whereas Fang can see Vanille's and offer temporary solace from the cruel reality of their fates. Vanille at this moment is too far gone; wrapped in her own little cocoon of problems and choosing ignorance over choosing to face the reality of what her older sister was feeling. She may be able to lie with her mouth and body to the rest of them, but her eyes don't lie to Lightning.

She sees it all within Fang's eyes, the loss and pain.

In fact, Fang is in so much pain that she's frozen with it. Inside of her is a desolate icy wasteland where nothing could survive, a place so cold and so shut down from the world that Lightning doubted even with her limited interpersonal skills she could reboot. Light reflected for a moment, she'd seen people like Fang before in the Corps. Soldiers who were shell-shocked to the point of complete shutdown from the world, they retreated and tried to escape the world emotionally. She finds herself surprised Fang is still functioning and is still able to get up in the morning; functioning the way she does. Perhaps she was saved by her memory loss, she has no memories of the happenings in her world so she doesn't need to live with the memories of what she did to her homeland, but she must live with the consequences instead. It was much better than a constant reminder in the soldier's opinion.

Lightning seems to understand the burdens that Fang carries as she carries a similar one. How it must have felt to carry the hopes, dreams, and well-being of an entire civilization only to fail at the last moment where it counted the most. She had an impossible mark to measure up to; and when she failed, she lost the memory of her failure but now faced the consequences.

It's not fair to Fang – everything she's doing; they're doing seems to be playing right into the hands of the Fal'Cie. But it's not Fang's fault, and it's a revelation she'll have to come to when everything isn't locked down tight and sealed with frost. Lightning isn't the best with emotions, even she'll admit to that, but she wants to help. Wants Fang to see that this isn't her fault, wants her to toss that easy smile and really and truly feel it.

Lightning wants Fang to look in the mirror and see the woman she sees.

Lightning knows Fang can get there; she's sure of it. Because Lightning likes Fang, likes her in a way that makes her face flush and her heart beat faster, and gives her butterflies low in her stomach. She wants – hopes that she can make Fang feel the same way but before that, Fang has to _thaw_.

And then, only then when Fang can feel, Lightning may be able to show Fang how she feels. Show Fang what she does to her; take her hand, press it to her chest and show Fang how her heart races. Then, carefully, gently press Fang back into the grass and show Fang what she means to her.

As Lightning sits at the small campfire at night she looks across to Fang silhouetted against the silvery blue backdrop of the crystal shell of Cocoon. All she can do for now is sit there and wonder;

"_What can I do to break the ice?"_


	2. Ice

Fang doesn't understand why people compare Lightning to ice.

Sure, on the outside Lightning is a woman who is callous and cold, a woman who closes herself off from the world. If you were to look at her in the eye, you'd only see your own emotions reflecting from her. Her words can cut deep too, like jagged shards of ice being chucked at you.

However, in the end it's all superficial, like a river that never freezes completely under ice, and flows beneath the sheet of ice. Lightning is far more than that; after all she did learn fire before she learned ice.

Fang can see that all the time, she sees Lightning burning in the back of her eyes. Sure, there are times that it's more visible to her and the others. Those moments where her vicious temper flares up, or the times when her voice gains a desperate tone when she speaks about their focus or Serah those are the moments the others can see and acknowledge. Fang sees it deeper than that, or just perhaps more clearly than any of them. And what she can see-

Lightning's lost, thrown around and battered in a firestorm of her own emotions. She feels everything so strongly that without something to ground herself on… or to, she ends up tossed and thrown about like a ragdoll within her own psyche. Yet she carries on, putting up a front that she has control, to hide it all away, and be that perfect soldier that the Guardian Corps demands of her on a daily basis.

At times, Fang wonders how long Lightning has lived this way, if she's even aware of what's real and what's another wall; another front. Fang isn't the least damaged of the l'Cie by far, but she thinks she may be able to help the soldier. Lightning isn't the talking type, but maybe if Fang can get her to let out some of that fire she has it may help to quiet that storm inside of her.

Maybe then, and only then with the raging inferno in hand, she'd be able to see Light smile. A true, real, genuine smile; not that usually finds its way through her walls that's constrained and calloused, half frozen because of her walls. Fang is convinced the moment she sees that true smile that it would be warm and glowing, and would light up the faces of all the people around her.

And as Fang sits watching the haloed form of Lightning through the tiny flames of the waning campfire she wonders what it would take to get her there.


End file.
